February 23: Fedor Bezrukov (Connecticut U)

Title: Living beyond the edge -- Higgs inflation, metastable vacua, and importance of radiative corrections
 
Time: 2pm
Place: 2N36
Abstract: The measurements of the Higgs mass and the top Yukawa coupling indicate that we live in a very special Universe, at the edge of the absolute stability of the electroweak vacuum. While fully stable situation allows for simple Higgs Inflationary setup, boundary and unstable situations turn out to be also very interesting, and also allow for inflation and successful Universe evolution. The key point is taking into account radiative corrections to the couplings at the energy scale $M_P/\xi$. Then, the inflationary potential can appear even for metastable SM vacuum, and the temperature potential at preheating prevents the Universe to settle in the high scale vacuum.